Should Not Be Protected by Copyright Law

Until Lotus and Apple sued their competitors for copyright infringement, software user interface designers did not think much about whether intellectual property law might impose some constraints on their design decisions. Even those who knew that copyrights were available to protect software probably understood this to mean simply that a person would have to write his or her own code to develop a program similar to an already copyrighted one. Given the proliferation of computer hardware clones, the apparent legality of hardware clones, and the extent to which competition and innovation have been flourishing in a market full of hardware clones, it was not surprising that software clones would appear on the market as well. The computing community tends to think that clones-hardware or software-perform a valuable service in the market: providing additional product choices to consumers, price competition, and/or improved product features. User interfaces, the most visible aspects of software products and the key to their usability, have been among the features of software products that software cloners have chosen to emulate. It made sense to incorporate into one’s own products aspects of user interfaces that seemed to work well in already commercially successful software. The success of these products indicated that users had learned and come to be comfortable with a particular style of interface for a particular type of software, and generally expected or wanted the other software producers to use the same or similar